Thanks For Riding The Rocket: A Tale of Post-Nuclear Toronto
by GobbStopped
Summary: A tale of a young man, having lost it all, on a journey through the shattered ruins of Toronto, in the year 2033. Please, really, feel free to review, or just tell me its shit. Or even, dare I say, tell me its okay!
1. Boiled Blood

Thanks For Riding the Rocket

Chapter One

"Tim, go upstairs and bring this to Roman." a steaming tin cup was shoved into his hands as soon as he got to the top of the staircase, "Poor guys been on watch a good hour now with Joel. A man needs _some_ stimulation."

Tim took the cup without argument, looked at the smiling face of the man he didn't recognize and pouted. New faces at Royal York were about as common as green grass, which was a joke in itself. Being exposed to the Surface, (Royal York had never benefited from hermetic doors like most of the stations further down the line) and being under attack constantly made Royal York a much-loathed, but in the same breath, a much-loved station. The people living there defended the Subway, and the rest of the Subway gave Royal York what they wanted, ammo, food, clothes, books, weapons and more than one woman, under the table.

So to see a man shoving a cup of coffee into his hands, and speak about people Tim knew like _he _knew them, hell, like he knew _him_, made him uneasy.

Tim's hand went to the pistol in his jacket pocket.

"And how do I know you there pal?"

The man was tall, dressed in a thick padded jacket and a faded cap with a Bluejays logo, he wore a short beard, dappled with gray, and unlike many in the Subway, had a full set of teeth.

"Friend of your fathers," grinned the man. "Known him a good thirty years, and you since you were born kid." He sipped his own cup of coffee, and ran a hand through his beard.

"You're bigger. That's for sure."

Tim took his hand from his pocket and smiled.

"How the _hell_ are you doing Kurt!"

Three minutes later, they were all sitting in what used to be the Gateway News kiosk built into the wall of Royal York's second tier, which was directly above and in front of the platform and homes of the four hundred people who lived day by day on the third tier.

Roman sipped his coffee with a gracious smile and warmed his free hand on the barrel fire they huddled around, his shotgun tight between his knees. Joel chattered away, nervously, to nothing, manning the machine gun they had bought from the Left Line encased in the cinderblock bunker they had thrown up years before, topped by sandbags and rusted razor wire.

"So, where _is_ your Father exactly Tim?" asked Kurt quietly, finishing the last of his coffee and stirring the small pot they had coming to a boil on the grill above the barrel, "I've got news."

Tim had finished his coffee a while ago and was looking into the fire, Kurt hadn't been talkative since they had got upstairs and he had given him a start.

"On the surface, as far as I know," he answered truthfully, "He went past the cordons with Allison yesterday headed towards Islington Station, said something about scavenging for gas for the armoured car, but I honestly don't know." Tim found himself speaking as quietly as Kurt, there was no reason but the time. Watch at the bunker on the second floor got exceptionally dangerous after dark. The polewolves tended to come en mass, if they came at all, at night, along with their larger cousin, the polebear, mostly alone.

But the biggest problem, by far, were the snouts, what used to rats, larger, meaner, sharper teeth and a long nose, hence the name. They were as mean as they were numerous, and any sane man would take his own life before being dragged off by one, as they were wont to do.

"FUCKING... dark..." blurted Joel, his voice resounding off the walls and drawing a whistle, which just barely reached Tim, from the third floor. The little man with Tourette's went on chattering, the machine gun barrel wobbling at the staircase to the surface, a bright stream of light poured from the industrial work lights they had topping the left side of the casemate, powered by a generator on the third floor by extension cord, illuminated it. Particles of dust hung lazily in the stream of light drifting slowly towards nowhere, and the only thing on the staircase was the crushed glass the put out every night.

"Calm down Joel." Roman said in a completely monotone voice, eliciting a smile from Tim, "There isn't a thing out there that will hurt you worse than me if you don't stop shouting."

"I'm calm," Joel spat, whipping around as he did so, "It's not _my_ fault I have a fucking disease."

Joel went back to chattering, and played with the machine guns sights.

"Anyways." Tim said, a little louder than before, "What news do you have Kurt? Must be important. Been so long I didn't even recognize you."

"Gimme' your bowl." the bearded man grumbled, fishing his own from his backpack at his feet, "Trouble brewin' in the tunnel north of Keele. Couple of days ago it nearly got itself wiped off the map by snouts just pouring through the tunnel early in the morning." He filled his bowl with the mushroom soup and took Tim's bowl, than Romans. He blew on his a bit and spooned some of the weak stuff into his mouth before continuing.

"So they sent a couple fellas to _my_ boss asking for help, it must take something to make six hundred snouts migrate spontaneously. And Keele has been having a tough time lately, so Oskar told me and Cup to go poke around in the tunnel and see whats what. Well, no one from Keele goes past the three hundredth meter for good reason, the snouts rule the roost, so to speak, and for a good hour me and Cup waded knee-deep in rat shit. Down and down we go, the tunnel was on a pretty decent slant, and we reached Brickworks station about an hour later. We both thought this is where it would get ugly, the snouts would be nested here and any that hadn't run into the fire of Keele's boys and girls would have probably stuck around."

He spooned some more soup into his mouth and sighed.

"But there was zip. Nothing. Not a soul. Not a thing had been touched since people left about twelve years before because of rats. So we poked around and found some blood on the platform. It was pretty fresh. We pushed on after a while, but there was still nothing. No rats. No noise. It was pretty fucking creepy."

Tim pulled his the zipper on his jacket all the way up and shivered, it was getting bitterly cold, even with the fire, maybe it was Kurt's chilling recounting of his life beyond the cordons.

It was probably just the wind.

"It was late, so we broke a door down into a utility room and crushed a bottle like always. Cup started a lantern and we looked around the room, there was shit, gibberish, scribbled all over the walls, we couldn't read a damn word, it hurt your eyes to look at." He looked into the fire for a few seconds and was silent, stirring his soup. "I took first watch. Cup dozed off quick. And... Well." He paused for another second. "About an hour after Cup blacked out, I heard a kid. Laughing. Like the stock laughter they had in cartoons." His face softened for a moment. "I woke Cup up but after that we heard nothing. We both sat up until about 6 Am, then we headed farther down the tunnel. Took us about two hours down hill to reach the old tunneling machine. Stripped bare, couple of skeletons, but again, no rats, nothing. So we kept going. Cup started to voice his concern, and I had to agree with him, the place gave me bad vibes. And Cup, if anything, was a man I trusted. So we went until the tunnel became bare rock. It went down, deeper than any tunnel I had been in yet. He told me to hold up when we reached a crossroad, the tunnel split off and he turned the corner. I sparked off a flare and set it down, followed Cup. And he was gone. Well as you could imagine, even one such as myself got a little unnerved, but I took off down the tunnel looking for him."

Tim furrowed his brow, and Roman nodded.

"All I found was his rifle, bent in half, and his beanie. I got right the fuck out of there after that. Straight back to Keele in..." he stopped, thinking "About an hour and thirty minutes. Took us an entire afternoon to get that far."

"Terror drives men to crazy extremes." Mumbled Roman, white as a sheet and looking into his soup.

"Your joking." Stammered Tim, his mouth moving awkwardly around the words. "There's no way that could happen."

Kurt spooned some more soup, now lukewarm, into his maw, spilling some into his beard, which he wiped away on the back of his hand.

"I wouldn't lie about that boy. Cup was a friend of mine, a close one. It's just not somthin-"

"Well, what do you mean, _he was gone_, like, disappeared? Vanished?" Roman asked.

"Exactly. Vanished. Into thin air, how else can I explain it."

Tim stood up and jumped out of the casemate, he motioned for Roman to toss him his rifle and he obeyed.

"What exactly do you need to tell my dad this for, Kurt?"

He pulled a horn from his bandolier, blew the dust from the first round and slid it into place.

"I want your father to come with me to actually find out whats going on down there." Kurt said plainly, looking at Tim with a furrowed brow. "Where ya going?"

"Upstairs, I was supposed to relieve the guy there but I ran into you." he turned to leave, slinging his rifle.

"I'll go with you." Kurt picked his pack off the ground and poured the last of his soup into his mouth. "Hold on a second."

They sat in what used to be the ground level building of Royal York station, everything that could be remotely useful elsewhere was stripped from this place early on. The huge glass windows lining the walls were covered in iron duck board, plywood, doors they had taken from homes down Royal York road, anything. The only comforts the guards on surface duty had was a threadbare couch, backed with sandbags, and a bonfire. In reality it wasn't so bad, the fire kept you warm, and most sane people kept a blanket with them. So there they sat, mostly in silence, for an hour. The usual howls and barks came from just beyond the single door to the outside world, a heavy steel thing they had welded together from all sorts of junk.

The silence was finally broken by radio check.

"Surface, this is Home, how's it?"

Tim drew the battered walkie-talkie to his mouth and gave the all clear.

Kurt put his rifle on his lap and sighed.

"So. What do you think is going on past Brickworks Station?"

He looked at Tim and shrugged.

"Lots of people talk about ghosts, and honestly, before the war with the Russians... I believed in ghosts, sure. It was something fun to talk about with your pals when you were really high."

"You think its ghosts then?"

"No." Kurt shook his head, but grinned. "I said people _talk_ about ghosts, and let em', I could see why. But that's a bit to simple. Humans tend to assume the absolute worst about things they can't explain, this being a perfect example. I know how fucking stupid that sounds but in this age... Its better to be a little skeptical, is my opinion."

"Good policy, is my opinion." Tim echoed Kurt and dug into his pocket, pulling out his cigarette case filled with the weak joints they sold for insane prices down at Union, and offered one to Kurt before lighting his own.

Kurt pulled on the weed and coughed a little, smiling as he breathed out smoke.

"Been awhile." he said, taking another drag "But me and your dad used to burn these like candles."

Tim just smiled and nodded.

"So all I want is your dad to come with me, see if we can find Cup, and when we fail to do that, we find what got him."

This didn't sit very well with Tim whatsoever.

"You said Cup vanished?"

"Yeah," Kurt frowned "he did. But you shouldn't worry about your dad Tim, he is one lucky, lucky man." He puffed the joint, and roached it.

"Ghosts can't touch Allen. Not in a million years."

Tim trudged down to the third floor, said his goodnight to Kurt and took off, like a moth to flame down the platform for his room. Shifts on watch lasted six hours, four of which had been spent in silence with Kurt, the only talk being about the war between the Socialists and the 1867 Line, or ghosts, and the only thing that he could even fathom thinking of was sleep.

He pulled open the door to his tiny home, a simple timber frame with cardboard and towels, mostly, covering the walls, which was near the middle of the platform. Because of a lack of space, even those able to afford a higher end room, like himself, were confined to a 7 by 7 room, no more, no less. Families got it slightly better with a 7 by 10 room, but it wasn't much. A cot occupied the length of an entire wall, and a third of Tim's room, along the other wall was a table with a camping stove atop it, alongside a gas lamp and about a dozen books he had collected over the past couple years.

He pulled the only chair he had from under the table and sat heavily, the joint, amazingly, was still affecting him. He stripped off his boots, flak jacket, fleece coat, sweater, pants, and socks.

He blew out the lamp, hopped into bed and was asleep in about three minutes.

"Up. Come on Timmy... Wake up."

Tim mumbled something and swatted away the hands shaking him.

Roman sucked his teeth and kicked the legs of his cot, dragging the last vestiges of sleep from Tim, waking him up.

"Thanks a tonne Roman." he growled, rubbing his forehead. "Was kicking really needed?"

"Seeing as I was standing here for ten minutes before your ass got up, yes, yes it was. But now get yourself up, there's a problem across the street and we need to go give it a look-see."

Tim just gave a thumbs up, and Roman left.

He pulled on his clothes and stepped outside, hopped down onto the tracks (which had been filled in with concrete and topped with plywood twenty years before) and headed toward the only bonfire of any size that early in the morning, the guards fire near the western tunnel.

The bonfire burned where they had placed a few bricks in a U shape to avoid embers escaping and refrained from putting plywood down to simply avoid a fire. The tunnel was bricked off halfway, where it met one of the steel girders holding the ceiling up, a few bricks had been knocked out to offer loopholes for guards stationed there, while the other half of the tunnel was blocked by a thick sandbag bunker which, like the brick wall, was topped with razor wire.

The only spotlight the station possessed had been mounted in that bunker, along with an ancient M2 machine gun they had found, still bolted to its pintle. The APC and its occupants were long dead. Why waste a perfectly good machinegun?

It had come in handy many times since then, they could all attest to that.

He plopped himself down on a rock hard sandbag beside one of the men on watch, and looked up at the digital clock mounted above the mouth of the tunnel.

_6:22 AM._

Frowning, he looked at Roman across the fire, who was sipping coffee from his most treasured object, a worn out Beatles mug.

"You got me up for my shift 3 hours early? Tell me now why I shouldn't slug you... You know I love me my sleep."

Roman looked up from his coffee with a puzzled look splayed across his face.

"It has nothing to do with shift," he grumbled, pulling at his scraggly beard and taking Tim's offered cup, "Nothing to do with shift..."

"Right. Right, sorry. I was barely awake when you told me."

"No matter." Roman said flatly, "It's just a problem with the radio antenna across the road, we should be done in an hour. So it's no big thing."

"Alphonse is coming along to, so we will have," Roman paused, and leaned in closer to the fire "_so much fun. _The guys a fucking hoot. I'll say that much."

"Alphonse?" echoed Tim, "This is a milk run, why are they sending an ex _special forces _dude with us on a fucking milk run!"

Roman shrugged and sipped his coffee, sloshing it around in his mouth loudly, much to Tim's chagrin, before he swallowed.

"I would have thought you would be happy to have artillery like him going up with us. It may just be across the street, but were going to the top floor of that building man... Shit happens is all I'm saying. And he's the type to have _seen_ shit happen and know how to deal with it."

Roman folded his arms, triumphant.

"So why are you so worked up over it?"

Tim clucked his tounge and shifted uneasily, Alphonse just threw him off. Tim liked to think of himself as intelligent, but Alphonse was the type to take the wittiest reply, dissect it, and make you look like an idiot. He had never been part of the Alphonse fan club.

"I'm not." lied Tim, his face reddening as he gulped at his coffee.

"I'm just wondering what our glorious leaders expect to be wrong up there, that they aren't telling us about, that they deem it dangerous enough to send in a guy who has killed more people than _we_ have fired bullets."

Roman smiled, but he looked a little less sure of himself.

"You think way to damn much."

They talked until the clock read _6:30,_ when one of the guards came walking up from the other end of the station, and lead the pair into the Office.

The 'Office' was the room occupied by the stations elected leader. The elections were held every year, and anyone over the age of twenty could put their name on the ballot, the only rules being that those up for election _had_ to be running on some sort of serious platform, what ever that may be.

Politics never weighed heavily on the minds of the people living at Royal York, they heard about the war between the Soviet Union and the 1867's over at Younge Station, the sprawling halls and tracks there littered with corpses, and were turned off from extremism. The crowd at Royal York favored socialism, like many in the Subway, or, in any case, liked the idea of equality, and fought for it tooth and nail. Royal York had been the scene of many political coups in the twenty years humanity had called it home. Nazi's had migrated from Kipling, at first trying to gain Royal York through politics, then resorting to brute force when their puppet was massacred at the polls.

The war came and went, there were no more Nazi's in the Toronto Subway system.

And so Socialism, but not to the extreme taste of the Soviet Union, was the norm in Royal York, and just about everyone got along with that just fine, the rules were lax with Royal York's brand of Socialism, at least less so than the stringent laws the 1867's supposedly lived by.

The guard, a big man who Roman chatted with, they were obviously familiar, knocked at the door to the Office, and pulled it open.

The two men stepped inside and the door closed behind them, the small man sitting at the desk piled high with papers looked up at them, fixed his glasses and flashed a broken set of teeth at them.

"Comrade's Lars and Novotny, pleased to see you, sit."

Ivan Vorobyov was Royal Yorks head man, and was decidedly left-wing. A diehard Red, for many years he sat around the bar near the mouth of the eastern tunnel, moaning over the last news from Russia, that Moscow was a waste, with thousands sealed up in the subway, like in Toronto. It was the same for dozens of other cities around the world, just before the BBC went dead, they reported hundreds of thousands of people rushing the London subway system, trampling each other, like ants, to escape Armageddon. But he was focused on _Moscow,_ his home, his true love, its beautiful canals and the Kremlin's star topped towers, supposedly reduced to dust.

But then last year, he changed. He put down the bottle and started taking to the soap box, inciting a fire in the hearts of the people who lived in Royal York.

_The Surface, _was his call, his simple creed, and he lived it. Every day, he sent Scouts to the surface, picking through the rubble for treasures from an age long gone, his final dream to lead a crusade, a Red Tide, from the tunnels to reclaim the shattered landscape that was Toronto.

Chasing a pipe dream, he would be gone next year.

The two of them sat on the roughshod stools that wobbled perilously provided, and listened.

"As you two know, a couple months ago we set up a radio antenna on the top floor of the apartment building, across the road." Tim winced at the use of the word _we_, this little man hadn't lifted the fucking thing up a damn elevator shaft with ropes, _he had done that._ "And we need it to keep chit-chatting all day long with Union." he spoke in a sing-song voice and grinned.

"We stopped receiving from Union yesterday night, at about 11 o'clock."

"Maybe the line was cut? We only ran it through a quarter-inch thick pipe..." Roman started.

"Unlikely, you know yourself we ran two lines." the little man dismissed Roman with a wave of his hand "It would have to be the antenna itself."

"So we go and fix it, not a problem." Tim folded his arms, "Right?"

"Well, there may be a few... Hiccups. You know what I mean Tim don't look at me like that, we live in a city where bears stand on _stilts_ for shit sake."

Roman grinned, along with Tim, at the mans appraisal of a polebear.

"Very true Comrade Vorobyov, do you fear these bears on stilts will overtake us? Is that why you're sending a toy soldier with us?"

Vorobyov went red, but spoke with admirable calm.

"Comrade Alphonse is a man you should respect. There's a _reason_ your father takes him out to the surface with him over you. Remember that."

Romans eyes went wide, and he looked away, Tim saw red, but his jaw stayed firmly locked.

"And yes, that is why I'm going to send a toy soldier with you."

"I can't believe I voted for that guy." spat Tim "Blood... Boiling... Fuck me, let's get a drink."

The duo wandered down the platform, they had an hour or two to kill before they headed up, muttering quietly to each other and stopping at the booze can where Ivan Vorobyov used to drown his own sorrows, taking a seat at one of the few empty tables. The crowd was not especially thick this time in the morning, much less so than later on in the evenings, when dozens of men would crowd around tables built for four people, and drink until the guards had to be called to get them to their cots.

It was 8 o'clock by then, they had been talking to Ivan for a while, though it passed to Tim like nothing. Roman was the technician, he was far from it, and the technical mumbo jumbo they exchanged for the better part of an hour and a half flew well over his head.

Roman held his hand up and a bottle with two cups was quickly brought over, he pushed the candle sitting on the table to one side and paid the barman who had rushed the bottle to them, placing a cup in front of Tim and then doing the same for himself, he poured them both a generous measure.

He doled out a few bottle caps extra to the barman as tip, and then threw his shot back, Tim quickly followed suit.

The ground this deep wasn't irradiated to badly, so a few plants, tough ones, like potatoes and mushrooms, could grow pretty well, and the alcohol they now enjoyed so thoroughly, was made from some concoction of the two.

And God was it wonderful!

"Well." Roman said gruffly though his moustache after another shot.

"Well." Echoed Tim.

"You pretty much had that coming. Calling out his man."

"Regardless." Tim leaned closer to Roman "The guys a fucking asshole, either way. My dad doesn't even _take _Alphonse up, Alphonse goes solo, mostly."

Roman looked unimpressed. "You don't talk to the head man of a station like that. _Regardless."_ He sounded decidedly sarcastic.

"Yeah well. I'm gonna run fer head man... top dog... the station could use a fresh take on policy." Tim slurred, pushing his hair out of his eyes and pouring himself another shot.

Roman looked disdainfully at the cup Tim filled for himself.  
"You should cool it with the drink, Brother."

"I'll quit drinking when I'm in the grave."

"_Drink will put you there."_

Tim's face reddened as he took his shot, and he slammed the glass to the table.

"Tim, its eight in the morning."

"Roman. Its eight in the morning. Fuck right off if yer gonna tell me how to drink... Or not to drink. Funny how you just took two yourself."

Romans head fell into his hands with a thump and he ran them up through his hair.

"I'm going to hit the hay for a couple of hours," the bigger man sighed, pushing the chair out from under him and pulling on his plaid jacket.

"I'll see you upstairs."

Roman trudged down the platform, the shadows swallowing him up as he left the bar.

Tim smiled drunkenly at the big man, he had known him for a few years, since he and his family had moved from Ossington. He was a good man, tough, dependable, did a good days work.

All traits his father had taught him to respect.

Tim thought about another shot, instead chatting up the barman before taking off back to the western tunnel so he could sober up a bit by the fire.

Maybe he could even catch his dad coming in from up top.

As Tim made the short trek to the western tunnel, he took in the sights and sounds of his station one more time. The pink tile covering the walls, itself covered in a layer of dirt and grease. The trader trying to peddle goods on a torn table clothe, a broken toy truck, a guitar, some sickle-magazines for a 5.56mm rifle, a revolver which looked like it would blow up in your hand... Kids drawing in chalk on the door of his room, who he shooed away. He loved this station, the old women who peeled potatoes, the drunks who sang raucously, the kids who drew in chalk, he loved _his_ station.

And looking at it, through half drunk, watery eyes, he couldn't help but feel a terrible sense of dread looming over everything.

He caught a glimpse of Kurt by the fire, the big man looked like he had just gotten up.

"Hows it?" Tim asked as he sat himself down on the floor beside Kurt.

"Hows it? I'll tell ya, I'm to fucking old to be getting up before noon." He said grumpily.

"I would have thought that Nuclear Armageddon erased the need for rising early."

Tim smiled and nodded.

"How about you, young man?"

He thought about what the decrepit old communist had told him, "Just being angry as hell like usual." He slurred, a grin parting his lips "Yah' know, nothing new."

There were other men, half a dozen, milling around the barricade, they were all dressed in the gray overalls and flak jackets of guards, and were armed to the teeth. A couple offered up short laughs at his joke. But most threw yearning glances to his rifle.

Finding a quality rifle, like Tim's, was a rarity, most of the guards in this station toted a double barrel, or a Uzi. A few of the really unfortunate ones made do with the slapped together 9mm submachine guns they churned out from sheet metal and pipes, in the little factory set up in a utility room. Tim himself had been lucky enough to have taken a few long handcart rides to Union, and picked himself up a pretty Kalashnikov. He picked it out over the hundreds of other rifles, because unlike any of the other AK-47s the merchant had been peddling that day, this one had a built-in wooden fore grip, it was simply beautiful.

A thousand bottle caps, on a rifle. He had never spent so much money on something, and he probably never would again.

Kurt dusted his hat of noisily and grunted, pushing himself off the ground and looking at Tim with a furrowed brow.

"Am I going to have to tell your father that your into the liquor cabinet again?."

Tim's was off guard for a moment, but shrugged it off.  
"I never knew we used to have a liquor cabinet..."

Kurt smiled and waved him off, shaking his head.

"I've gotta be on my way."

Tim arched an eyebrow, still feeling the sting of Kurt's joke "Where to exactly old boy?"

"I'm going to look for Allen," Kurt said hurriedly, "the fucking guy takes two days to find some _gas?_ I think not. I need him now or never, so its time to go snooping around for him."

Tim stood up shakily and grabbed Kurt's C-7, an old Canadian Army rifle, and handed it to him. Kurt pulled his gas mask from his backpack and a couple of filters from one of the pouches on his web gear, pulled on the mask and took a few deep, muffled breaths. He pulled a small headlamp from his jacket pocket and tightened the elastic around his baseball cap, he looked slightly ridiculous with the cap on under the straps to the mask and headlamp, but it was an efficient pairing in most other ways.

"Alrighty then." Kurt said, his voice muffled by the gas mask "I'm gone."

He offered Tim his hand, which was covered in a worn leather glove. Tim took it and squeezed, and although he couldn't see Kurt's face, he had a feeling he was being grinned at.

"Catch you on the other side Tim."

Kurt turned, spoke a few low words with the duty officer at the sandbag bunker, and jogged along the tunnel toward Islington Station.

When the clock read 10 o'clock, Roman knocked on Tim's door softly, and he blew out his gas lamp and pulled on his boots.

He walked with Roman quietly. They both wore the standard get up for a trip to the surface, steel toed boots, a pair of sturdy cargo pants and a heavy jacket of some kind. On top of that, they each wore a flak jacket and a web harness loaded down heavily with ammunition, batteries, a knife, first aid kit, compass, flares and dozens of other bits and pieces of kit that made time in the surface a tiny bit more survivable.

As they stalked up the stairs to the surface, they pulled their gas masks from their packs, Roman preferred an open face design while Tim went with a slightly more sturdy Army issue mask, and they pulled them on over their heads, running their fingers over the rubber seals and then covering the air intake, taking a few breaths to be sure nothing unwanted would get through, they screwed the filters into place, and Tim had to struggle to hear Roman over the sound of his own strained breathing due to the confines of the mask.

Tim could see the grin on Romans face as he pulled his double barrel from his shoulder, and took a pair of red shotgun shells from loops on his belt, Tim did the same for his Kalashnikov and pulled a horn from his webbing.

And there they stood for a moment, looking quite imposing, the two of them shamelessly basking in the fact.

"Shall we be going?" Roman said with a smile, his loaded shotgun held tight across his chest.

Timothy Lars flicked the safety on his rifle to _off_, nodded, and the two men stalked up the stairs to Royal York stations third floor.


	2. Into The White

Chapter Two

Alphonse was waiting for them there, smoking a cigarette with the guard, the mustached man had a grin splitting his lips, and a bundle under one arm.

"_Ahh._" Alphonse shot a look to Tim and Roman walking up the stairs and took one last long drag of his cigarette before stomping it out "There you two are, ready to get going?"

He fished his own gas mask from a pouch on his belt and pulled it on over his shaved skull.

"As ready as we'll ever be, did you bring a tool kit?" Roman rubbed his hands together then pulled on a pair of leather gloves.

"Just like you asked for baby," the old Army veteran grinned, handing Roman a leather sheath with the tools he needed buckled tightly inside it, "my own personal one. You've been warned."

Tim used the break during the exchange to study Alphonse a little more closely, through his gas mask he could make out the faint lines of scars covering his face, the largest running left of his right eye and straight down his face to his chin. He wore camouflage fatigues, faded US Army woodland, and a pair of cracking combat boots. Instead of the web gear afforded the guards at the Stations expense, he had invested in a tactical vest, seemingly hand-made somewhere in the subway, it was dark green and thickly padded, with dozens of pouches loaded with equipment similar to Roman's, or Tim's.

Alphonse held a finger up, asking the pair for another moment, and the unwrapped the bundle under his arm in one swift motion, a sleek and compact machine pistol lay beneath. It looked factory fresh, except for the obviously modified barrel, which was about as long as a Kalashnikov's, it had a plastic fore grip mounted as far forward as possible, and the slender horn magazines seemed to slip into its pistol grip. A powerful flashlight was also attached to the underside of the barrel, it seemed like it had been braise welded into place, in a position where Alphonse could still unscrew the cap and change the batteries.

Alphonse flicked the light on and off a couple of times, satisfied that the batteries did not need changing, he turned to Tim and frowned. "Your awfully quiet." "I'm awfully _cold_." Tim replied, stomping his feet and watching his breath mist through his gas mask's filter. Alphonse nodded enthusiastically. "_Très bon. Laisse arrivent là-bas et abattent les bâtards._"

Roman smiled but Tim messed up his face over the strange words. He knew it was French... But the language was nearly dead, there couldn't be more than a hundred people in the subway who still spoke it, and this strange, witty man was one? Just a drop in the sea of peculiar.

"I uh... I didn't know you were from Quebec..." Tim said, shrugging his AK from his shoulder and following Alphonse, who gave the guard he had been talking to a friendly bump on the fist, to the heavy welded door he had stood watch over the night before.

"Good guess." Alphonse said, crouching at the heavy steel rod they used to lock the door into place, and grabbing the handle at its base, pulling on it with a grunt."I just paid attention in high school."

Tim gave Alphonse a hand and pushed up on the second handle at the top, the rod started to budge, and then it gave, sliding easily up, then to the left, the rod rotating pulled three thinner steel bars from across the door, unlocking it.

Alphonse gave Tim a nod and then placed a hand on the heavy rail which, in a moment, he would use to open the door to the surface.

Tim, Roman and the guard, who Tim just couldn't quite remember the name of, backed up a few paces and trained their weapons at the door.

Tim held his breath on instinct.

Alphonse threw his weight backward, and the door swung open.

Snow blew in through the door as they hurried out, the guard shouted one last goodbye as Alphonse pulled the door closed from the outside, and as Tim heard the bars go into place into their lugs, a feeling of uneasiness enveloped him.

"Lets book... Cmon!"

Alphonse pulled his machine pistol to his chest and took off to the left, covering the forty or fifty feet in a couple of seconds with Roman and Tim close behind, puffs of white powder being thrown in their wake. The trio leapt the low, shattered wall of what used to be a pharmacy, and held up for a moment. Peeking from behind a pock-marked column, he could just make out the faint glow of the Christmas lights they had strung up on the top floor of the apartment building, now about a hundred yards away.

Alphonse took his helmet off for a moment, pulled his hood up, and returned his helmet to its resting place on his head. The wind was strong and cut through clothes like a dagger, Tim's own ears were like ice blocks hanging off his head, and they had only been outside for a matter of moments. He cursed silently to himself and rubbed his ears uselessly through his own hood.

Alphonse motioned for Roman and Tim to wait, and he ran to where the pharmacies checkout would have been, Tim pulled his head from around the column, and waited for Alphonse to return.

The wind was nearly loud enough to drown out a man shouting at the top of his lungs, so there was no chatter, Roman watched the front of the store and Tim peered the way they came, back toward Royal York, half hidden by the eddies of snow that came with the wind.

They both froze solid when they heard the first howl, which was quickly followed by a second.

Alphonse appeared a second later, he motioned for the two to follow him, and they made their way to the front of the store. The building, the apartment, was only fifty feet away now, the lights on the top floor shone a little more brightly through the snow, which had now picked up, and Tim couldn't help but want to be inside the building, and off of these streets, if you could still call them that.

The asphalt was cracked, the huge fissures going down for dozens of meters, and the junked remnants of cars, trucks, vans and a few military vehicles had collected in them, half buried themselves by twenty years on snowfall.

All the roads, every single one, was like that now, a few were reasonably usable provided the weather wasn't so bad, and you could pick your way through the mounds of rubble, pieces of destroyed buildings and cars that had been fortunate enough for not spill down into the fissures.

But the weather was always bad, so few tried.

Alphonse crouched behind the checkout and waved Tim over to him, then pointed at the door of the apartment across the street, telling him to move for it.

Tim did not argue, orders weren't his to argue with, and so he pulled the magazine out of his rifle, checked it one last time, and vaulted the low wall and stepped onto the shattered remnants of Bloor Street.

More howls, farther away, to the left. Tim looked over his shoulder to Alphonse, who was to busy craning his neck to get his eyes on what was making the noise. Howls on the surface were nothing to worry about normally, the wind, wild dogs, any number of things howled.

But these were deep, guttural howls, something big, and close.

Tim hugged his rifle to his chest and zig-zagged across the road, his eyes watching the windows of the building as he ran at the fissure dividing the street and leapt across, landing heavily.

Puffs of snow flew from beneath his boots as he found purchase and kept running. His breathing got heavier and he cursed the sweat dripping into his eyes that he couldn't, for the life of him, wipe away. He ran around the corner and waited beside the doorway to the apartment for Roman and Alphonse. They joined him a couple of seconds later and Alphonse lead the trio into the lobby. They didn't pause to survey the lobby, passing through and directly to the stairwell. They climbed the six stories in as many minutes, and stopped at the top for a few seconds to catch their breath. The staircase was covered in a layer of ice two inches thick and sections of it were ready to crumble. It was a perilous, tiring climb.

"You okay?" Tim yelled into Romans ear, he himself was exhausted and dreaded the climb down.

"I'm peachy. Peachy!" The man yelled back, his voice just barely reaching him through the gasmask.

Tim stood and took a few more deep breaths before he switched on his flashlight and took a few long steps into the hallway. He stalked slowly forward, breathing heavily and swinging his rifle left and right made him feel much better, so he did that as much as he could walking the fifty feet to the room they needed to be in.

They got there quickly despite Tim's dramatics, Alphonse pushed open the door as quietly as he could and stuck the muzzle of his machine pistol through the crack, stepping through slowly and checking the room as he did. He waved Roman in, then Tim.

There was a huge portion of the wall torn out here, the roof above had collapsed as well and it was the perfect place for the antenna. The only downside was that is was across the street from the station and there was no way the room, having been reinforced with sandbags in the windows and a barrel dragged up the stairs for lighting fires in, could be manned round the clock.

So they had to send groups up to repair it, to keep is broadcasting, and to tidy up the place once in a while.

Alphonse closed the door slowly and walked over to the gash in the wall, peering at the eddies of snow swirling outside, turning left and checking the kitchen and bedrooms. Roman motioned for Tim to check the other rooms of the apartment, and pointed his shotgun at the front door, waiting to know the place was secure. Tim nudged open the door of what used to be a bedroom. A mattress leaned against each window, propped up by some timber beams that drooped and bent as if the two swollen mattresses weighed a metric tonne.

Tim left the door ajar and checked the only other room in the hallway, opening the door to the tiny bathroom. A bucket had replaced the toilet, which had disappeared inexplicably a decade before.  
Tim lowered his rifle, turned slowly and walked back to the living room. Alphonse was already there with Roman, looking over his shoulder at the transmitter, the door was closed, and a chair – which by the look of it, was on its last legs – was wedged between the door nob and the floor.

He trudged passed the two huddled men and pulled a tarp covered in a half-foot of snow from over a pile of fire wood and tinder. He pulled an armload from the floor and threw it into the bottom of the barrel in the center of the room, striking a match after pouring in a little gas. The room warmed up a bit, and Tim couldn't help but admire the snow squall that was picking up.

That's when they all heard the shots.  
And then the howls.

Alphonse was on his feet in an instant.  
The three of them craned their necks from the window, peering through the snow to try to find where the fighting was.  
He half-saw two figures though the eddies; both swaddled in greatcoats, bowl helmets chipped and slashed, one dragging the other through the snow. A trail of bright red blood in his wake.

And then he saw the polewolves.

There were only six, but that was more than enough. They slowly followed the pair, edging closer until the standing traveller levelled his rifle at them and a long, booming series of shots sent another yelping back into the pack.

Tim's eyes widened. A _tough_ mother was down there fighting for his life. One of the wolves had tried to surprise him, leaping at him from behind and slashing at him with his dew-claws. The great-coated figure dropped his compatriots writhing form and fell flat to the ground, narrowly missing being beheaded by the twelve-inch talons. The polewolf landed heavily and snapped its jaws, bile pouring from its maw in anticipation of its next meal. The man simply aimed at the beast and filled it with lead as he stood. Yelping and howling as it shuddered with each impact, he fired from the hip and charged it, the serrated bayonet on his rifle slammed downward and into the skull of the creature.  
It wailed, and was dead.  
Tim had _thought _he had seen a serrated bayonet, and without a second thought had torn the chair from the door and sprinted towards the stairwell. That was Allison.  
So the man who was bleeding must have been his Father.

Alphonse was the second to follow him, then Roman, the trio made it down the stairs in a record time. The sounds of a battle they were powerless to assist in driving them forward like an avenging spirit.  
Tim's blood boiled as he practically threw himself through the door of the apartment building that only a few minutes ago he had clambered up. His father was lying there, bleeding. A pack of monstrosities waited to pick him apart.

He bit down on his teeth so hard he could have sworn he felt one crack.

All he had in the world was lying on that street, his lifeblood pumping from him and staining the snow, threatening to be entombed forever out here and forgotten amidst an endless snowfall.

He rounded the corner of what used to be a Rogers video store and raised his rifle, the closest of the things was a few dozen meters away, and he smiled for what felt like the first time as he felt the Kalash buck wildly in his arms, puffs of snow being carried away by the wind where he missed, and being stained with the abominations almost black blood to mark where his aim was true.

Alphonse was close behind him and he heard Romans shotgun crack, decapitating another of the things before the other three could react.

The remaining polewolves went on their hind, stilt-like legs and bellowed out a challenge to the sky, baying and panting and by the look in their bulbous, black eyes, hungry.  
The largest had black, course skin the texture of a badly burnt steak, who shrugged off the rounds Allison poured into its flank as she dragged Tim's father around the corner and towards Royal York.  
_Get him home girly_. Tim thought to himself with a grin, the bloodlust taking him now. He reloaded his rifle and pulled his own spike bayonet from its sheath on his leg. "Tim!" Alphonse bellowed, looking down the street and to their left. There, two hundred or so meters away, was the rest of the pack, at least thirty of them, bigger, and more grizzled than even the Alpha of this group.

Tim's mind was shockingly clear. All boys grow up in the shadow of his father, and Allen Lars had a shadow like no other man. He had instilled in him a sense of duty and pride in his work, a ethos of no retreat, no surrender, give the enemy no ground.

To get off of this street was to kill his father, to leave was to let a pack of polewolves right onto the doorstep of his home. Allison would get there, rally the guard, and come back all guns blazing.

The three of them would have to survive, simple as that.

Alphonse wore a look of calm under his mask that unnerved even Tim. It was like all this was nothing to the older veteran, staring death in the face may as well have been an every day occurence.  
Roman loaded another shell into the barrel he had fired and took a bead at the trio a few yards away. Tim could hear him pray in Czech, his voice shaking. Alphonse nudged his arm and drew a smiley face in the air. They were closer now, they tramping of their feet shook the ground beneath them and the three sitting across the street took their turn to pounce. Romans shotgun boomed, there was a sound like cloth ripping as Alphonse opened up. The leering, roaring mass of beasts were upon them, and Tim's mind went blank.


End file.
